


Ballybran Storm

by hellkitty



Category: Crystal Singer Trilogy - Anne McCaffrey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-30
Updated: 2011-06-30
Packaged: 2017-10-20 20:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A storm rolls in fast, and Trag finds himself in charge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ballybran Storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



The storm blew up quickly. Almost too fast for even Ballybran Met to warn for. The first alarms were redlines, howling, sound and sight nearly overwhelming for those who had successfully adapted to the planet’s symbiont. Trag managed to shut the cutter off with hands steadied from long practice at these alarms. He knew better than to ruin a retune with a twitch of the hand and these green crystals were already spoken for as a comm heptad. Always in demand, greens. Not as much as the standing order for the nonad blue-greens, but…Trag knew enough that he would take the smaller, steady sales rather than waiting on windfalls.

It didn’t mean he wouldn’t hope for the windfalls, though.

After that was haste and nothing but, as he grabbed the headphones and heavy gloves that he always prepped by his tuning room’s bench. Lanzecki was off-planet—and Singers had learned to run themselves without his help, but still, Trag felt the responsibility. He hit his comm unit as he raced toward the hangars, snapping and getting an equally curt acknowledgement from Medical that they’d heard and yes they were prepping.

Storms made everyone edgy, the symbiont in bone and blood writhing like an animal. You let go. You didn’t hold to grudges. You forgot.

You forgot because the symbiont made you forget.

His feet thudded into the hangar, the wide bays already open, the sky outside louring the dark purple that boded their worst nightmare. An F-4 storm. It was more than the winds: newcomers didn’t understand that at first. It was not the wind. If you could manage interstellar travel, no terrestrial air current is a threat. But it was the howl the winds brought out of the ranges, as though the planet itself were screaming in endless agony. And the symbiont screamed too, resisting, feral, behind your eyes, in your marrow.

Sleds were already skidding in, drivers reckless but not desperately so…yet. And the newcomers, yet to undergo the transition, herded like sheep, clutching the white plasfoam containers as the more experienced—maintenance techs, Singers who hadn’t been on the Ranges, Enviro techs—led them through the all too familiar drill.

Trag took a breath to steady himself. The storms whipped around like music, wild and offkey and defying melody. But still, he could sense the crystals, could almost hear the crates sing to him as they passed. It was his adaptation, that he could sense the crystal. It made him peerless at his job, his tuning of the crystals an intimate thing, like sex, a blending and melding of tones, his body turned, tuned to resonances.

A cry and a point—just at the perimeter, a pillar of black smoke. A crashed sled. “Who’s not accounted for?” Trag barked, stepping to the hangar edge.

“Lars, Vitun and Killashandra,” the hangar chief bellowed back.

Trag swore. Killashandra. It had to be. He gave a nod at the chief, dashing out into the worst of it, letting the air scream around him, tear at him as though it wanted to strip his flesh from his bones, scouring, hissing against the goggles he pulled down over his eyes.

It was Killashandra’s sled. And there she lay, sprawled half out of it, foot kicking idly at where the grav directional control would be. He hauled her up by the front of her jumpsuit easily—partly because of his squat strength, and partly because of her birdlike frame. She and Lanzecki seemed to forget about food in the ranges, caught in the thrall of the song itself. It was a trait of the best Singers, the Milekeys, but also the worst trait.

He’d told her to look for blue-greens. She was normally good—sharp, coherent—when he spoke to her. She’d remember. She always had a memory for credits and what sold. If there were any blue-greens to be had in any of the returning cuts, it would be from her.

“They didn’t want to let me go!” Killashandra babbled, her eyes wide, staring past Trag’s shoulder at the swirling sky. “I want to sing to them forever.” Her voice—trained, operatic, cut even through the storm’s howl.

Trag muttered. She could sing to them forever, dead in the ranges. Stupid. He set her on her feet, staring at her ankles. “Can you walk?” he shouted, pressing her hand against his chest so she could feel the vibrations, as the wind drowned out his own baritone. She responded better to vibration than sound anyway.

“Walk?” A hint of haughtiness in her eyes, “I can walk, Trag.”

Right. Trag pushed past her, grabbing the cutter from where she’d thrown it in the back. Place it back in the special safety mount? Not Killashandra. And even his quick inspection told him the blade had warped. Still at least she brought the cutter back: the handle was intact and those were hard to come by.

He shoved it in her chest, turning her, splaying one broad hand across her narrow shoulders, giving her a stumbling shove toward the hangar. That was enough. Cruel as it sounded, he wasn’t here for her. He was here for the crystal.

The crystal. It burst into song the moment he opened the storage compartment, each skirling up a harmony from its box. Some rose there—she must have found an easy vein, someone else’s claim, and wanted to cut just enough to justify a registry.

His hand hovered over another crate. Ah, here. He could feel greens, their high timbre even through the howl of the storm, even through his gloves. He marked that box in case he had time to come back for another. But…there. Yes. Blue green, nine, maybe ten, the minor scale seeming to sob out the storm, as if expressing the grief behind the planet’s pain. Beautiful. Some souring—it was to be expected in this weather—but the cuts were good. He could tell from here. He hauled the crate up, clutching it against his stocky chest as he slammed the lid on the sled’s storage.

He ran for the hangar, a wild break and run, his stubby legs ungraceful, ungainly, but agile enough, steady even in the buffeting winds. He ran until the wind stopped fighting him, and only then did he look up, deaf even through his ear protection. He shoved the crate into the arms of a young med tech. “My tuning room. Straight there.”

He looked: Killashandra was flopped across a sled, another med tech scanning her, pushing a drink into her shaking, scarred hands. She made it. Lanzecki would be pleased. That was something. He’d be more pleased by the blue-greens.

He turned. There was time for the greens. They would sell, too. And he was risking his life to go out there again and for what? Killashandra’s profit?

No. He didn’t care about profit, money, not even for himself. He left Ballybran as rarely as possible. He did it for the crystal, his own sweet song, the partner he’d be forever faithful to.


End file.
